"To me one of the greatest examples of this, the discovery of this kind of true love, was when my wife Mukti had her own awakening and the first thing she said to me when we got home from retreat was ‘I don’t need you anymore.’ That was agape speaking. Most people would be terrified by that kind of love, because it doesn’t need you, it doesn’t need to possess you, it doesn’t need to hold on to you. It’s not plugging into you like an electric socket to get what it needs. It’s that love that stands on its own, and in its own, and is completely full and complete. It comes from a direct experiential knowledge of our true nature. It comes from that all by itself. And so what can sound very negative - I think most people would be frightened if they came home and their beloved said ‘I don’t need you anymore.’

Because there is nothing more beautiful than somebody recognizing their fullness. Don’t misunderstand me. It didn’t mean the other kind of [desiring] love disappeared. It doesn’t mean that there is absolutely no desiring or wanting. That kind of love, it’s not that it disappears. It’s still available. It still can happen. I can be a more, from what I’ve seen, a more romantic idiot than most people I know. But then it’s more like a celebration than a seduction, you see? One isn’t doing it to get anything back, it’s just fun. So it’s not like you lose the other thing, or that you have to lose the other thing, you just lose your grasping to it, your commitment to this sort of deficient love that we’re sold and taught. And then we spend a good part of our lives wondering ‘Why doesn’t it work out? What’s wrong? Why haven’t you made me happy, what’s wrong with you? You haven’t been able to make me whole, what’s wrong? Let me go find another.’"